The present invention relates to devices, methods, and computer program products for outputting a storage location of a verification-target character string to be output by software.
In this day of advanced computer technologies, software products including general-purpose software products are created and used in various countries around the world. For example, in the case that a software product is created in an English speaking country, user interfaces are generally displayed in English. In another country, such as Japan user interfaces are generally displayed in another language, namely, Japanese. When text is displayed in a language not familiar to a user that user interface can be difficult for the user to utilize. Accordingly, a mechanism to allow user interfaces to be displayed in other languages is employed.
A translation file in which a source language used by a software product is translated into another language is created in advance, and the software product uses this translation file, whereby this mechanism allows user interfaces to be displayed in other languages. With such a mechanism, it is possible to display user interfaces in other languages simply by preparing translation files compatible with the software product for every language, which thus permits the software product itself to be used generally. In many cases, this translation file is created not by software creators but by translators. However, translators do not necessarily have knowledge about a software product, translation of which the translators are in charge of, nor the translators do not necessarily know the software product well. For this reason, there is the reality that errors are often made in translation.
Such errors in translation are discovered by people who actually perform a test for a software product, also referred to as testers. Upon discovering an error in translation, the testers inform translators of a location and a content of the error, and the translators then modify the error in the software product. Complex software programs can include multiple translations files, which produce the “translated” text. When the size of the translations files becomes relatively large, a substantial amount of time can be spent discovering which translation files are responsible for which user interface translations. For example, there are 1500 or more translation files per language in IBM Rational Software Development Platform (SDP) version 6. It takes a significantly long time for both testers and translators to identify a translation file, among these translation files, corresponding to a user interface whose translation is determined as a mistranslation.